The management of information for medical purposes for use by physicians, hospital staff and other workers in the health care field poses a number of challenges. The information required by a physician, to optimize health care, is both varied in nature and in the sources from which it must be derived. A physician may typically need to have access to patient medical records, diagnostic images, diagnostic and dietary information systems, an appointment schedule, patient test results, medical literature, a prescription and drug interaction management system, insurance and billing information as well as a staff management system, for example. Access to such information and related services necessitate the use of a system including a communication platform supporting Internet operation and possibly local intra-net operation. Further, it is desirable that such a system for providing access to such an array of comprehensive information sources and related services should also provide a user interface that is suitable for use by a layman in the field and should not require extensive operator training.
There are a number of difficulties in providing such a comprehensive system. Specifically, it is necessary that such a system should support multiple different concurrent Internet based applications with the capability of conveying information between individual applications. These difficulties are compounded by the fact that individual applications may employ a unique data format or other operational feature limiting concurrent operation and interoperability. A system according to invention principles addresses these difficulties and derivative problems.